Of course, The Dubai Mall is no ordinary shopping center. Billed as the world's largest (in terms of total floor space) by the Guinness World Records when it first opened in 2008, the mall is larger than 50 football pitches.

Though the mall closes at 10pm (midnight on the weekends), in some ways it is busiest after hours, when a cleaning crew of 100 sweep, vacuum and polish over 1.5m square feet of space every night.

"It's a huge mall," notes Ahmen Hussein, the night shift supervisor for cleaning. "We have to finish before the opening hour. Sometimes we only have five or six hours to do it. It's hard, but we like the challenge."

An even more arduous cleaning task sits just outside the malls doorstep. The Burj Khalifa Lake -- an 150m liter artificial body of water that also houses The Dubai Fountain -- requires daily maintenance, partly because the desert climate itches to contaminate it with sand.

"The job is to target the areas where we have the highest sand accumulation, and clean it in a systematic way," says Jean Hanna, director of operations for The Dubai Fountain. In addition to the human staff, there are underwater robotic vacuums employed to undertake the task.

Despite the manpower that goes in to running the mall, Alabbar concedes that even more can be done to ensure it lives up to its full potential:

"We've tried really hard to make sure it's prestigious, respected, looks after people, customers, companies, shareholders -- the whole thing. I think we're getting there. We still have to work a little bit, but we're getting there."